Saturday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 25, 2023

Luke 20, 27-40

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” And they no longer dared to ask him anything.

The fact that God had the law regarding the raising up a son from a childless widow  to carry on the dead man’s name shows his mercy for the widow.  In other middle eastern cultures it was up to an individual if he wanted to follow the custom or not.  And this custom did not exist at all in the west.  For the Jews, this was written in the Law.  It meant the care of the widow who might face poverty otherwise, and the consolation of a son who could grow and eventually take care of his mother.  It also meant that she was not cut off from the family into which she had married.

The Sadducees raise an interesting question which their very materialist outlook cannot answer.  Members of the Sadducee sect tended to be upper class and associated with Temple authority.  They arose as a counter to the Pharisees in the years of Greek rule and then the short-lived independence under the Maccabees.  Where the Pharisees accepted the writings of the Prophets as Scripture, the Sadducees did not.  They took what we might call a fundamentalist attitude and denied any teachings which were not found in the Pentateuch.  Thus, they rejected the interpretations of the Pharisees on such matters as the Sabbath and the purifications.  At the same time, they denied doctrines such as the resurrection from the dead, clearly taught by prophets such as Ezekiel.  Their conception of God and heaven came out of a belief that there was no spiritual component to a human being, nor any angels.  Death meant the extinction of the individual.  References to Sheol were understood as merely poetic.  Perhaps they envisioned God as a sort of giant man with great powers, something like the gods of other Ancient Middle East peoples like the Babylonians.

The Lord answers their question to him with patience, not mocking their beliefs as the Pharisees would.  “Those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.”  “The coming age”, the seventh age, the eternal Sabbath.  The Lord Jesus comes at their question by revealing the spiritual reality of the life of heaven, something the Sadducees could not do, so blinkered were they by their presuppositions.  With the end of life on earth comes the end of earthly institutions such as marriage.  “They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.”  The Lord speaks of the souls of the just as being like angels.  And because the souls are spiritual, there is no need for marriage, an important purpose of which was to produce children through whom the parents would live after they died — this being the only way the Sadducees considered a person could exist after death.  

“That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  That is, God identified himself to Moses thus:  “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  God does not say “I was” the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob, and so on.  God speaks to Moses as though Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph still live.  The Lord Jesus uses the Bible of the Sadducees to prove to them that there is life after death and that it is a spiritual life.  The Lord connects the truth of life after death with the reality of a resurrection to come.  He is able to do this because if all souls survive death, there must be a great judgment to come, for surely not all the souls will enter heaven.  This judgment will require not just a gathering of souls but a resurrection of the dead so that body and soul, the whole person could be judged.  “He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”  That is to say, God does not destroy anyone with death but preserves even sinners in life after death.

“Teacher, you have answered well.”  The scribes belonged mainly to the Pharisaic party and had looked on with interest to see if Jesus could defend the doctrine of the resurrection.  They may have opposed him on many matters, but here they offer their public approval.

We all carry about with us presuppositions and definite outlooks that prevent us from coming at new information and experiences in such a way that we might understand them on their own terms.  It is so necessary for us to be able to see through anything that might blinker us from seeing the work of God in the world.  His ways are not our ways, and if we expect him to act as we would we will miss signs of his presence in our world.